An Open Letter to My Son...

I wish people would stop telling you that you're lucky. Over and over, from cops and friends and strangers and people that know you but don't know me, I keep hearing them say how lucky you are. You are not lucky, kiddo.
You deserve to be loved and respected and honored and allowed to make mistakes without getting beaten or ignored or given up on. You deserve hugs and wrestling and sarcasm and faith in the man you're going to become. You deserve second, third, and fourth chances at getting things right. You are 14, which is one of the worst ages to be. You have been tossed around and tossed out of the way, when you should have been put first and in the spotlight. You are brilliant and smart and funny and you don't know any of that.
You are an amazing being and have strength beyond measure. I look at you every day in absolute wonder at how you smile and attack the day and every opportunity it sends your way. By any right, you should be so angry, but you're not angry. You're grateful. And when those people tell you how lucky you are, you agree with them. Yes, you have a chance at life that many kids in your situation don't have, but that doesn't make you lucky. It is something that you and every single one of those kids should have had but didn't. And won't. And I can't help everyone of them, but I can help you. I have the gift of you in my life, and I honor and love you like a child should be. *I* am the lucky one in our family. I get to see you for what you are inside and teach you what you're worth and show you what a real family is and how sometimes, to the most blessed of people, the opportunity to MAKE a family comes along. You are more than your biology. You are standing in the sunshine with a wide-open heart and mind despite every attempt to knock that out of you, and I love you more every day for it.
I can't possibly give you everything you deserve, like all the video game systems, an awesome bike, a car when you're old enough, clothes with good labels, organic produce at every meal, or crazy vacations twice a year. But I can hug you every day. I can tell you that I know how hard you're working to be good. I can be there for every success and every failure and every time you try it again. I can support you and punish you so you can learn about rewards and consequences, and I can show you that love has no conditions. And that THAT is the kind of love you should always have had. I can't fix or take away everything that hurt you, but I can be an endless supply of Band-Aids and peroxide until those things heal a little.
I can take what you already know and adapt it to a new life. I can teach by example even though it changes the way I live my own life. I can put you first and never look back at what I used to be. I can wash and fold and cook and clean and give and take as needed, and I can do all that for you because I WANT to. And you know that. I can be the mom in your life for the rest of mine, and do it thankfully, because I am so very, very lucky to have the chance to do it at all.
You are not lucky. You are a precious, precious gift to the world. And the fact that you have love in your life doesn't make you lucky, it just makes things right.

Because it's semi-private..

There are about two people who will even realize that I have updated this space, but I have something to say and I have no other appropriate venue, so here goes.

I am going to India.

I can't even tell you how many people (and on some occasions, multiple times from the SAME people) have said, "Why India?" and I have responded with some lame one-size answer about religion, midwifery, Doctors Without Borders, why not? and the like. And while I thought for a while that I wasn't exactly sure why, the truth is I know precisely why, but I'm scared to say it. Now, though, with three weeks to go, exactly, I have to say it out loud. To myself, mostly, but also to the universe or to my ladyfriends or whatever.

I am going to India to grieve.

I am going in order to take the time, as far away as I can get before I'm on the way back on the other side, to mourn the loss of my beloved career. To mourn the fact that I can't have everything I want in life, and that I have to change what I'm doing to get where I want to go. I have to grieve the fact that I am not going to have children. I have to accept it. I have to acknowledge that, although still possible, it is very unlikely and should it come to pass that there are no children of my own, that will be a regret on my deathbed. And I have to be okay with that for the next 35-55 years. I am grieving the finality of my youth, the aging of my parents, the growing hardness in my heart. I am grieving the pain of all these changes, the harshness of my reality, and the things I have let slip past me unnoticed until it was too late.

I am going to India to celebrate.

I am celebrating the strength that continues to surprise me in it's unending supply. I am celebrating the fact that a girl who grew up with nothing is seeing the world in time to enjoy it and tell her parents about what she saw. I am celebrating a different philosphy on everything. I am celebrating a wide open future and the courage to tackle anything, even if I have to do it alone. I am celebrating the fearlessness of my soul, which has always been my favorite thing about me. I am celebrating the friends who are sending me off, the friends I hope to meet, and the fact that I have realized that I must be a better friend to myself.

I am going to India to change.

I don't know how, why, when, or how much, but I know I will be different, and I trust that I will come back changed for the better. At least I will be changed for good. (Pardon the Wicked reference, it just seemed to fit.) I hope to know the answers to all of my questions. I hope to be fixed of my addictions and in a comfortable spiritual place. I hope to write and photograph and live and breathe and sleep and touch everything I can, and to feel the electricity of it come up through my feet.

I am going to India for one other reason.

I laid in bed one night and imagined with all my being that I was on my deathbed and about to kick it. I looked back at the life I imagined I'd had and thought, honestly, about what I would regret not having done. There were five things I could come up with, and I wrote them down. Two are done already, one is unlikely to ever happen but COULD, and one is up to someone/thing that I can do nothing about. The last is to see India. And I told myself that if, on my deathbed, there are no children or grandchildren to see me off, knowing I went to India, did everything I wanted to do, sucked every last bit of marrow from my life and left the world better than I found it will be enough consolation that I could pass with an easy heart. I don't plan on dying anytime soon, but just in case, three of five is pretty good. I don't ever want to regret anything, and I would definitely regret not finishing that list while I could.

Now I just have to figure out how to have a beer with Dave Matthews.